Mind Sports South Africa's (MSSA) blog on competitive gaming in South Africa from proto-computer gaming all the way through to the most modern. For more about MSSA go to: https://www.facebook.com/mindsportssa/

Monday, 17 April 2017

Stamping out abuse in gaming.

Abuse must be stamped out of gaming to protect the player.

Recently it was brought to my attention that a gamer came under criticism for questioning the abuse by gamers on the basis of gender, race, and sexual orientation.

A 'so-called' prominent member of the CounterStrike: GO community, in my opinion, seemed to defended the actions wherein he claimed that sporting codes do not care about the lower leagues, and that in esports such behaviour is acceptable in most of the privately owned events.

For a start, every sporting code is absolutely concerned about abuse at every level - especially at the lower leagues where athletes develop within the culture of the sporting code.

Thus IeSF and its affiliates, like MSSA, also differ from the privately owned events that allow such abuse.

IeSF and its affiliates stand for 'clean' sport where any form of bullying, harassment, and doping is not acceptable.

Should private events not clean up their acts and start taking action against such types of abuse, my prediction is that sponsors will leave the private events in favour of the 'clean' events.

The reason for such prediction is that according to the Safety at Sport and Recreation Act, sponsors may also be held liable for any harm.

Such abuse may be seen as harm, and the person responsible for such harm, the event owner, and the sponsor may, in terms of the Safety at Sport and Recreation Act all be held to be liable.

More importantly, such abuse, as described above, is of a criminal nature, and the offended party may well lodge a criminal charge against those involved.